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Lately, my life and everyone around me’s life has been completely out of control wild. We are all jumping from one insane event to the next. My Mom has been in and out of the hospital lately having problems with her heart resulting in a triple bypass. I fell and hit my head on the tub, went to the ER, and got a concussion. Work’s been nuts. That’s not even mentioning the fact that we went to Las Vegas, Kristyn finished her first year of her PhD, and we opened up the trailer last weekend. This isn’t even all of it. Oh AND?! Our car got stolen, then found, and we had to pay around $300 to get it out of impound. Point being that Momma is BUSY and TIRED. (I’m the “Momma” in this scenario.) Here are a few pictures recent pictures of these events:

The above is me at the ER after I fell. The entire day before, we’d spent in the ER with my Mom and the nurse had told me that she’s had people fall and not report it and die. Then the next day I fell and hit my head HARD. I felt kind of fine / kind of suspicious so of course I had to go. Ugh.

Here we are after getting our car out of hock. We’re smiling because we got it back and also because it’s the SECOND time that this exact same car has been stolen and returned to us.

The above and below pictures are on Mother’s Day. My family took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Michael’s Craft Store after eating brunch and realized we hadn’t taken any nice pictures together. We had to leave to go to Kristyn’s family’s house so we took this one in the aisle, LOL. Gorgeous family portrait.

Also, we forgot to take a photo with everyone in Kristyn’s family together before some people left so as we were walking out the door, we took this quick use. Another beautiful family portrait!

Last weekend we went Upstate for the first time in 2018. It rained and we slept all weekend except for literally this minute just before we left.

This is just Shirley sleeping on me and being a lunatic.

This is me and Kristyn in the ER again with my Mother. She was there to be admitted and we were goofing around. We took more goofy pictures too. Don’t let the fact that we were selfie-ing fool you into thinking it wasn’t a serious situation. It was but we handle serious situations with goofiness and this beautiful background was the partition curtain in my Mom’s room, ha.

the above picture we took after we found out that Mom’s surgery went well. We were jolly because of the weight lifted and all leaving for the day after being at the hospital since the morning. This bag that my Dad is holding up has my Mom’s initial “D” on it. She kept calling it “the D bag” as in “Can you hand me my D bag?” and it kept making us laugh. So here we all are the D bag.

We do find a way to enjoy ourselves but man I could sleep for a thousand years haha.

We are coming back home for the weekend because my Nana isn’t feeling well. We want to see our families, engorge ourselves with good Chinese and Pizza and possibly go here:

Our jobs are being so super cool about it and we are so grateful for that. Also it’s another example of all the synchronicity that’s been happening in our lives lately. If I hadn’t gotten this job right when I did, there’s no way we could have come home to see Nana right now. And how lucky that I got a job that values family over business. I worked at a job just a few years ago where my boss gave me a hard time over these following things:

1) She wouldn’t allow me to go to my Aunt’s funeral.
2) She was mad because I took time off to sit with my Dad in the hospital.
3) At another job, I had gotten a call that my Mom had had a heart attack (she didn’t) but was in the Emergency Room. I ran out to take the call and this guy CHASED ME OUT of the building and demanded to know what I was doing WHILE I was on the phone with my panicked family. I told him what was happening and he said he didn’t care, to get in and answer the goddamn phone and not to leave my desk again without asking him first. Yeah I quit that bitch haha.

Anyway, all of my bosses and all of Krissy’s allowed us to take the time no questions asked and I am SO grateful and thankful for that.

So we’re still in the planning stages of this because we just finalized the tickets yesterday. If you are one of our family members, please don’t stress out if you can’t make it to see us or anything. We couldn’t have planned this any differently so this trip is less about seeing everyone that we can and more about spending quality unrushed time with just a few loved ones.

We had toyed with having dinner in NY but when we woke up this morning, we realized it would be a waste of time. NY is (probably) not going anywhere and we couldn’t think of anything to do there that we haven’t done a zillion times before or would really want to do again. I mean there are a lot of NY performers we’d like to see and we looked into it but they all happen to be somewhere else right now, some of them actually in LA haha.

So that’s that. I’m still gonna post pictures every day. If I thought I was tired from the late night at GLAAD Awards, how am I gonna be next week? We are landing at LAX at almost 10pm after a six hour flight and then I have work in the morning! OMG.

I can’t even get into how awesome the GLAAD Media Awards were right now because I don’t have the time but we had so much fun. We laughed, we cried, we accidentally rubbed elbows with Mondo from Project Runway. We didn’t have cable during that season so therefore had no idea who he was. Nice guy though!

Anyway, all I will say for right now is:

Dolly Parton
Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Craig Robinson
Sean Hayes
People from the cast of Modern Family
People from the cast of Parks and Recreation
Kristin Chenowith
Joel McHale
Marlee Matlin
Meatloaf!

The list goes on, I mean there were just so many people there that I am such a big fan of. Also, we escorted the girls from “Pretty Little Liars”. They were really nice.

Kristin Chenowith received an award and her speech made us cry. Kristyn found it on YouTube and cried all over again. I’ll find it and post it later. She’s so damn amazing.

Anyway, I said I wouldn’t go into it and here I am anyway: Going into it. I’ll stop, I have work to do. Later.

I am STILL dizzy from the champagne I guzzled. I have seriously learned that:

Coleen + Alcohol = Broken Toy

I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have a hangover cuz I really don’t. I don’t feel sick or headachey, just fuzzy and sort of euphoric. Definitely NOT the way I want to feel at work. Drink some more Joe Coleen. You can do this!

Lately I’ve been having really vivid dreams. Last night I had this really long dream where I went to a garage sale in someone’s house. I went to buy two dresses and the family that was running the sale was really cool and friendly. The dresses were really pretty vintage dresses from the 60’s and about my size. One had a little stain on it. When I went to pay, the woman kind of wouldn’t let me leave. She wouldn’t let me pay and took one of the dresses from me. I said, “Fine if you don’t want to sell it, that’s cool, just let me pay for the other one.” She took my money but held onto one of the dresses and wouldn’t give me change. I had to get out of there because I needed to go to work. I had intended to go to the garage sale, come home, shower and then go to work. It was already past the time I was supposed to be at work, so I was like, “Fine I’m going.” Then she gave me the dress and I left.

I guess I didn’t care about my job because I decided to keep shopping. I walked down a main drag which I think was Kearny Ave and went into a shop. Inside there were all these 60’s Go Go dancers and it was decorated like Laugh In inside. It was a furniture store. It was pretty cool in there so I decided to look for bedsheets. When I got to that section, Oprah was there hosting some kind of event sale. She started talking to me and was REAL raunchy. Talking about how she always has safe sex and kind of just being the Oprah you NEVER get to see. I was so riveted but still kind of distractedly looking for bedsheets. Midway through talking to her, I realized that I knew she was gonna be there because I WORKED there. Her sleeve came up a little and she had a tattoo on her forearm. That was when my boss came up. I guess he forgot I had to work OR thought I was there to work OR was caught up in the excitement of Raunchy Oprah being there because he didn’t seem to notice or care that I’d mistakenly blown off my shift. I was trying to figure out what to do next when Kristyn bellowed:

COLEEN!!!!! WAKE!!!!! UP!!!!!

Then I told her the entire convoluted story and she barely pretended to pay attention though she’s told me some whoppers of convoluted stories in the past. Haha.

Anyway, here is my favorite YouTube Oprah video. This shit never gets old for me. Also, how do you work for OWN? I want to work for Oprah.

Last night we went to the supermarket after I picked Krissy up from work to pick up some cat food etc. I was in a cookie mood but also totally irresponsibly indecisive. I agonized over my cookie choices until Kristyn said, “THEN DON’T GET ANY!” (To be honest this was after me dramatically -and rhetorically- wailing, “Maybe I don’t even WANT cookies!!!” FYI, I don’t ever not want cookies.) So I said, “OMG YOU’D DO THAT TO ME?!” At this point she turned on her heel and shuffled out of the cookie aisle.

An hour and forty-five minutes later (give or take an hour and forty minutes) she came back and found me lying on the ground holding two packages of Mother’s cookies, one Macaroon and the other Chocolate Chip and staring soberly into space. (An aside: If you live in California, it is considered a hate crime if you don’t immediately shout out “MOTHER’S COOKIES!!!” when asked what your favorite cookie is. Fact.)

So Kristyn played some head games with me trying to suss out which one I wanted more. (Another aside: I don’t even like chocolate chip cookies, I just WANTED them. I DO however like macaroons a LOT and therefore didn’t want to buy them. This would make a lot more sense if we were all PMSing.)

So what happened next was a choose your own adventure type mystery without any of the choice and all of the mystery. Kristyn told me she was gonna choose FOR me. This made me happy and I decided to walk away so as not to interfere with her choice. I set off in a brisk clip toward the register and looked anywhere but at the groceries. I wouldn’t even rest my eyes on the computer as he was ringing stuff up. I carried the groceries out but swore not to even look at the bags lest I see through it to the package of cookies. We drove home and I decided to take it to another level. With my eyes closed I tried to find the cookies on the table. Unfortunately I was rummaging around in the wrong bag and I had to peek to find the right one. When I did, I closed my eyes, took out the package and held my breath (for fear I’d smell the answer). I put one in my mouth AND…

I want to start by saying that I am sorry if these every day posts with our faces and the mundane elements of our day to day are seriously boring haha. Well I am and I’m not. My original intent was just to take a picture of my face and this was because:

1) I think it would be interesting to see how and if my face changes over a year.

2) I’m not comfortable in front of a camera so it’s kind of nice to let go of that insecurity. Maybe next year I’ll do full-length body shots. I need to be comfortable that way too. Baby steps.

I added in the “what we did today” stuff because:

1) It was just a natural step. Why not?

2) I think it would be funny to see exactly what we DID all year. Like were we lazy? Were we busy? Was this a good year or a bad one? I think we tend to paint a year with a broad brush “good” or “bad”. I’m pretty sure this is going to be a tough year so I’ll be tempted to paint it with a “bad”. But if I look back on the days I’ve had so far, they’ve all been “good” or “nice” with only like one or two “bad”.

The interesting thought I had was this:

Me and Kristyn were talking last night about how it’s funny that you forget so much stuff in your life. The only memories you ever really hold onto are kind of stored in your brain as a picture and then the events are kind of words around that picture. Okay well let me back up. Kristyn was reading an article about Susan Sontag and in it, Susan was talking about the power of photography. She was specifically talking about war photography. How powerful of a medium it is. Like when wars are going on, on other people’s soil, if there isn’t a picture of it, we can’t feel it or imagine it. And how even one picture of one moment in time can encapsulate a moment and so perfectly sum the moment up AND give you an understanding of what happened.

So then we started talking about how your life is reduced to a series of small pictures in your head of events that took place. Conversely, we tend to hand onto the memories that we actually HAVE physical pictures of. Because the camera is doing the work that our memory does. Like if our brains are a filing cabinet for memories stored as images with words attached, photographs are like forcing your brain to recall a memory. Even if you forget that moment because it didn’t make that big of an impression, if there is a picture, you will be drawn right back into that moment and (for the most part) remember that day.

So I don’t know that a picture of my face a day will bring back startling vivid memories of me watching Buffy and playing Harry Potter Lego but in a way, I will have at least one year of my life that I know what happened every day. One year with a light shined on it. One year that doesn’t go hazy with memory. That’s kind of a nice thought. That said, I really need to get a job if I want this “memorable year” to be any kind of good memory haha. MOMMA NEEDS MONEY AND TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE SOME!

Th’sall.

P.S. Speaking of shit that happened, a woman just tried to walk into my house. Our apartment is on ground level and we don’t have a lot of windows so I keep the front door open with just the screen door closed. My front door opens out into our courtyard. SO if you walk into the courtyard, you can see right into my apartment and me sitting here. These two women came into the courtyard, came up to my screen door, talked to my cats and went to open the (locked) screen door to walk right in. I was like, “Can I help you?” She said, “Here’s an invitation to you from the Baptist Church!” I said, “Okay, you can leave it right there” so she stuck it in the door haha. *sigh* We need to move.

I just remembered NOW. 39 minutes into it starting. That I was invited to an informational meeting for a school I applied to. Specifically for a program I applied for that I do not know how it works and really could have USED and informational meeting for. Kristyn has to be at work at 11 so I remembered as she was pulling away. I actually RSVP’d that I was coming to this event. I actually marked it on my calendar and day planner. Then as Kristyn was leaving, a nagging feeling hit me like maybe there is something important I am supposed to do today. A quick check of the ol’ day planner lets me know I am a chucklehead. Coleen, you suck at life.

Reason why I rule at life:

This morning I bounded out of bed effortlessly and was in the kitchen making breakfast (bending, reaching, grabbing, doing) for about five minutes before I realized that I EFFORTLESSLY BOUNDED OUT OF BED AND WAS STANDING IN THE KITCHEN MAKING BREAKFAST. I’m healed! Man the past week was full of me slouching around like a 90 year old. There was a gutteral sound I had to make to do anything. Kind of like an “AAAAAAARGH!” Kristyn called it my “lifting weights” sound. Like I already said, my back was hella sore in the morning and today? Just bounded out of bed and made breakfast with ease. I feel like goddamn Cinderella (not the wenchy one, the princesa one). Kristyn gave me a hug and then a high five and said, “Way to heal!” I think that says it. Also, I think, “Coleen you rule at life” also says it.

* AHEM: This is another post that has been lounging in my draft folder since mid-December. Go here to check out Kristyn’s review of Check Yo Ponytail and here to check out her review on Peaches Christ Superstar!

Right now I am at the Echoplex in Echo Park at a party called “Check Yo Ponytail”. Kristyn is covering the bands for LA Music Blog. I am chilling on a couch. The bands are good but it’s kid of nice to go see a band I am not invested in for once. I always envy the people who can relax in chairs while I frantically have to be right up against the stage. On one hand I always want the total front and center experience and on the other, who’d ever turn their nose up at taking a load off? So it’s nice to enjoy the music and blog. Two of my favourite things uniting! Oh and sorry if my spelling reflects the Queen’s English, I somehow put my phone on UK English and am too lazy to turn it off. Oh also, we went to see Peaches do a one woman rendition of Jesus Christ Superstar the other day. It was called, you guess it, Peaches Christ Superstar. I am here to say that it was the bomb. The last time I saw Jesus Christ Superstar was in CCD and I barely paid attention. And going into this, I honestly wasn’t sure if Peaches was gonna do it tongue-in-cheek or not. BUT SHE DIDN’T. She was dead serious and it was AWESOME. I love Peaches in all of her incarnations but I had no idea she had such a killer voice. I mean usually what you like about her is her humor, dirtiness and attitude. Not that she isn’t a good singer but she doesn’t like belt anything out. With this she did and she was great. So good. Kristyn is gonna post a review on LA Music Blog so I won’t say any more other than it was awesome and now I want to see the movie. What else? Oh here are some iPhone pictures from Peaches Christ Superstar. If you have an iPhone you know they take crappy lowlight photos but THIS is something else. She was dressed all in white and had bleached blonde hair. The light on her was also white. She got so washed out that she looks like she got cut out of the picture. OR like an apparition. Spooky Peaches, spooky.

FYI: This post has been hanging around in my Drafts folder since mid-December so about a month or so. Since this happened, the Desperate Housewives episode I was on aired and my person was left on the cutting room floor. Before you pat me on the back and hand me a hanky, I am actually A-OK with this and this is not me just “being strong”. I was actually more nervous for anyone to see me than anything haha. I am more of a thrill-seeker/doer than I am attention-monger so the experience of doing this (and getting paid for it to boot) was more than enough. The “seeing me do this” was actually kind of the only downside but I wasn’t going to rob my fambly from seeing me mug on national tv, especially when I’m so far away.

Anway, if you want to read about what it was like, go read the jump below. I wrote this a while back and haven’t re-read it, I just want to post it so I can have it for my own memory because I doubt lightening will strike twice haha.